Lenovo announces Haswell ThinkPads and a really, really wide monitor

"17 hour battery life" and a 21:9 monitor top the list of today's announcements.

It's IFA week in Berlin, and that means that most of the major PC and phone makers are gearing up to announce their new products for the fall. Not all of these are going to make it to the US, but the things you see at IFA should be indicative of the products you'll be able to buy when the holiday season rolls around. Lenovo is kicking things off for us with a number of ThinkPad announcements—the new laptops are getting Haswell, but they still retain that classic ThinkPad look, right down to the red TrackPoint nub embedded in their keyboards. Let's take a quick look.

First up are the T440 and its slightly higher-end cousin, the T440s. Both include 14-inch screens (with touch as an optional feature), "up to" Haswell-based Core i5 processors with Intel's integrated HD 4400 GPU (dedicated GPUs aren't available in North America), support for up to 12GB of DDR3L, either mechanical hard drives or solid-state drives (in capacities up to 1TB and 512GB, respectively), and "up to" 17 hours of battery life when equipped with a high-capacity battery.

There are three major differences between the two models: screen resolution (the T440s goes up to 1080p, and the T440 tops out at 1600×900), weight (3.5 pounds for the T440s versus 4.0 for the T440), and price (the T440 starts at $899 and the T440s starts at $1,149). The precise specs of these base models weren't announced, but we'll probably find out more by the time they launch at the end of October.

The ThinkPad T440s is the slightly higher-end version of the laptop.

Lenovo

With an extended battery, both the T440 and T440s can get "up to" 17 hours of battery life.

Lenovo

The T440s includes three USB 3.0 ports (two are on the left side) and a mini DisplayPort out.

Lenovo

The third USB port, a gigabit Ethernet port, and a dinosaur of a VGA port all show up on the laptop's right side.

Lenovo

The T440's plastic has a slightly rougher look to it than the T440s'.

Lenovo

Otherwise the two laptops are fairly similar. Touchscreens and cellular connectivity are available options for both.

Lenovo

However, there's only one USB port on each side (for a total of two).

Lenovo

The X240 is the thin-and-light option, and while it offers a smaller 12.5-inch screen, it can also be configured with a 1080p display (1366×768 is also available, and touch is optional at either resolution). The laptop weighs 2.94 pounds and is 0.79 inches thick. It includes "up to" Haswell Core i7 CPUs paired with Intel HD 4400 GPUs, up to 8GB of RAM, and both HDD and SSD options. Lenovo promises more than ten hours of battery life with the six-cell travel battery attached, but it doesn't list an estimate for the standard three-cell battery (assuming the capacity increases linearly, expect about five hours). The X240 will run you at least $1,099 when it is released at the end of October.

The X240 is in many ways a miniature version of the T440s.

Lenovo

That's true right down to the VGA port. The laptop also offers HDMI out and two USB 3.0 ports.

Lenovo

As in the T440-series laptops, features like cellular connectivity and touch are optional.

Lenovo

The T- and X- series ThinkPads are Lenovo's flagship business laptops, but new models in the more wallet-friendly S series are also being announced today. The 14-inch ThinkPad S440 and 15-inch S540 are similar in many specifications: both come with "up to" Haswell-based Core i7 CPUs and Intel's HD 4400 GPU by default, but they can be upgraded to a dedicated AMD Radeon HD 8670M with 2GB of graphics memory. The larger S540 is usually offered with slightly higher-end options than the S440: its two RAM slots support up to 16GB of DDR3 (one slot and 8GB of RAM for the S440), it will take up to a 1TB HDD or a 512GB SSD (500GB and 256GB for the S440), and the S540 is rated for "up to" nine hours of battery life (six for the S440). The S540 also includes a 1080p display option, while the S440 tops out at 1600×900.

The S440 (pictured) and S540 are slightly less boxy than their T-series counterparts.

Lenovo

Both include two USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, and a gigabit Ethernet port.

Lenovo

Touchscreens are available in both models, but the addition adds significantly to the laptops' weight.

Lenovo

The S540 is similar in style, but larger in size. There's also room for a number pad.

Lenovo

The S540 can also come with more RAM and larger drives than the S440.

Both models can be configured with a touchscreen, but the addition adds significantly to their weights: the S440 goes from 3.92 pounds without touch to 4.23 pounds with it, and the S540 goes from 4.65 pounds to a hefty 5.2 pounds. These models are destined for Europe first if the pricing is any indication—the S440 launches in September and starts at €699, and the S540 will start for €649 in October. No word on when (or if) they'll reach North American shores.

Lenovo's final announcement for the day is a monitor, the 29-inch ThinkVision LT2934z. The display has the ThinkVision line's healthy complement of ports (one VGA, one HDMI, one MHL, one DVI-D, one DisplayPort, two USB 3.0 ports, and two USB 2.0 ports), but its real claim to fame is its super-wide 21:9 aspect ratio.

Monitors with 16:9 ratios are far more common, but this isn't the first time we've seen 21:9—it also cropped up in Toshiba's Satellite 845W and in monitors from LG, Dell, and a few others. At 2560×1080, the screen has as many vertical pixels as a more common 1920×1080 monitor, but enough extra horizontal pixels that fitting two or three windows side-by-side comfortably shouldn't be a problem. Like other 21:9 monitors, the LT2934z doesn't come cheap: it will run you $799 when it launches in October.

Is it possible to make more boring looking laptops? I suppose they have their place but, uggghh.

I like purposeful. I don't like things that are clearly added for aesthetics when they fail to be aesthetically pleasing. This is why many 'enthusiast' and 'gamer' products and components are poorly suited for assembling professional workstations. Flashy looks are so closely associated with lower build quality consumer-grade hardware that I cringe when I see shiny plastic.

I have a T430 and the aesthetics are perfect. It has a great island-style keyboard, but even the optional higher-resolution screen is poor by modern standards.

So I bought a T440s, and the screen is really bad. Like, unexpectedly bad, given the good reviews it had gotten. Googling around a bit, I found that Lenovo had run out of the good AUO screens for the non-touch 1080p screen, and used a terrible LG screen in many of the units, instead. Bad colours, bad viewing angles, light bleed, screen door effect, etc.

Lenovo promised to send me a AUO screen so I could swap out the one I got, but it's backordered for now. My new T440s ($1335, plus $250 for aftermarket SSD and extra RAM -- cheaper than Lenovo upgrades) sits idle on a shelf in my living room, because its screen is worse than that of my 3-year-old 15.6" Vaio, which cost me $650 new.